Keep the congress the hell out of 1A football.These guys have screwed up the country since 1994.Yes just what is needed tom delay jr.Maybe they can get the x-congressman from California who took 2.4 million in bribes to speak on honesty.

Top 14 eligible for BCS: Instead of having to finish in the top 12 of the final BCS standings, teams finishing in the top 14 will now be eligible for one of the lucrative postseason berths. The change reflects the addition of a fifth BCS bowl, which means there will be 10 BCS slots instead of eight next season

PHOENIX (AP) - For eight years, the Bowl Championship Series has created as much confusion as clarity.

And one year after it worked perfectly, with two unbeaten teams squaring off in a classic championship game, the BCS is changing again. And its top official wonders if fans will understand why.
"Just the fundamental format, I think, needs explanation," Southeastern Conference commissioner Mike Slive said as the BCS' annual meetings opened here Monday.

The BCS is expanding to five games next year, with a new stand-alone national title game being added to the existing four bowls - the Rose, Fiesta, Sugar and Orange.

Like the old format, the top two teams in the final BCS standings will play for the national title. Unlike the old format, they won't play in an existing bowl game. The title game will rotate among the four BCS sites beginning with the Fiesta in Glendale, Ariz., next January.

"I think one of the things that we need to be doing over the next several months is explaining the double-hosting model, which is in effect the national championship game rotating through the four bowls," Slive said. "I think there might be some confusion as to how the teams get to the (title) game."

It will help when the new game has a name and a title sponsor. That could be announced as early as Tuesday.

"We will (have a name) before we leave here," said Slive, who is starting his first of two years as BCS coordinator.

For the first time in three years the BCS meetings are generating little buzz.

Two years ago, the BCS responded to growing criticism by simplifying its standings formula, emphasizing the polls over the computers. Last season the formula stayed the same, but a new poll was created to replace The Associated Press Top 25. The AP poll was replaced by the Harris Interactive poll, which included former college football players, coaches and administrators, plus some media members.

There's little call for change this year, partly because the 2005 season played out perfectly from the BCS' perspective. Only two teams finished the regular season undefeated - Southern California and Texas - and they played for the BCS title in the Rose Bowl, with the Longhorns upsetting the defending champion Trojans.

The BCS' biggest change was adopted two years ago, when the fifth game was added in response to pressure to improve access for non-BCS conferences.

With more slots available, commissioners Monday discussed adding more at-large teams to the BCS-eligible pool. Under the present system, at-large teams must win nine games and be ranked in the top 12 of the final BCS standings. Commissioners are considering allowing lower-ranked at-large teams into the pool.

"The reason it came up, we raised it because you've added 25 percent more slots by going from eight to 10," Slive said. "Should we examine going to more than 12 (in the standings) as the cutoff for eligibility for at-large? We just started some dialogue today. We're going to continue to talk about that.

"I'm hoping that we'll come to some decision here," Slive said. "We may not. It's an important topic and we may want to talk about it more."

Any change would have to be approved by the BCS' presidential oversight committee.

Doesn't the change in eligibility actually make it more likely that the at large teams will be from the BCS conferences? Each year there will only be a couple of highly ranked non-BCS teams reaching the elegibility requirements (even if it was expanded to the top 20 or 25 teams). With tightly restrictions on eligibility, highly ranked BCS teams would be more likely chosen, because the BCS's hand would be forced. Now, a 10th ranked non-BCS team has to compete with two more teams, most likely from BCS conferences, for the BCS at-large spot.

Discussion about how the loss of Orange Bowl will affect the BE BCS bid in conjunction with what is written in the BE media guide. Also includes speculation about how the BCS will take into account the different conference sizes.

Today the Big East released its 2006 Football Media Guide. In the media guid were the new BCS rules.

Of particular interest to Big East fans is Rule #3 which discusses the criterion that must be met by conferences with automatic qualifier status.

Rule 3 States:
The Division I-A conferences have developed standards for annual automatic qualification for conference champions after the 2008 and 2009 regular seasons. The standards are based on performance during the 2004-2007 college football regular seasons. Such standards, however, will not prohibit the champion of any conference that has contracted with a Bowl to play in any particular game from playing in one of the participating BCS bowls. For example, the Big Ten and Pac-10 champions will, by contract, play in the Rose Bowl every year unless one or both of those teams qualifies for the National Championship Game.

One point that is not being discussed is that any of the current BCS bowls could be kicked out of the BCS alignment if the TV ratings start to decline. The ACC better step up and start to improve or the Orange bowl could be replaced with a Texas bowl or some other wannabe BCS bowl.

Not many fans are going to be very excited if another sub par Florida State team plays in the Orange bowl this year. The bowl lucked out last year by having two of the oldest and successful coaches face each other, otherwise, who would have bothered to tune in.

This was the concern with the Fiesta bowl having to take the MWC and Big East champ a couple years back with concern of bad TV ratings.

The BCS is a TV contract.

Bottom line, just because your conference is the host of a BCS bowl does not provide any more safety nets for BCS than being a host team.

You think the Fiesta, Sugar, and Rose care if the Orange or some other bowl gets added to the BCS mix.

Its all about TV ratings and all BCS bowls including the new 5th bowl better step up with TV ratings or any one could be expelled from the BCS rotation.

The only bowl that is probably safe is the Rose bowl with all the tradition and gets consistent good TV ratings.

The Fiesta bowl was concerned it could lose its BCS status if the new stadium in Glendale was not approved a few years back.

The only concern any conference including the five that are host have is wining and proving good TV ratings or any could be subjective to losing a BCS bid including the host bowl.

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